Teacher | Flexible Learning Strategies

How Making Mistakes Primes Kids To Learn Better

Once a month, this column will examine the insights that science offers about the way people learn, and how such findings could influence schools. Most of us can remember a moment like this from our school years: the teacher poses a question – maybe it’s math, maybe...

US: A teacher’s solution to buy school supplies for her classroom: Panhandling

As a public school third-grade teacher, Teresa Danks has grown accustomed to getting creative when it comes to providing supplies for her classroom. She hits up yard sales all summer. Weekends are devoted to thrift stores. Almost daily, she scrolls through online...

A teacher’s anti-solution to a big problem

It’s no secret that teachers don’t get enough quality professional development — or even the kinds of development — that can help them grow as educators. That has been a particular frustration to Ashley Lamb-Sinclair, the 2016 Kentucky Teacher of the Year who teaches...

14 ways AI will impact the education sector

There have been a lot of digital “next big things” in education over the years — everything from the Apple IIe to online learning. The latest is artificial intelligence education tech (AI ed), and only time will tell what impact it ultimately has. But for something as...

This is what can happen when you invest in every teacher

Sustainable Development Goal 4 is clear in its aspiration: we need to create a world where quality education is available for every child. This need is predicated on the assumption that to achieve this, all the persistent disparities that exist around gender,...

Together, technology and teachers can revamp schools

IN 1953 B.F. Skinner visited his daughter’s maths class. The Harvard psychologist found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. A few days later he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own...

How to motivate students to learn

Nothing is as devastating to a teacher as a classroom filled with indifferent students utterly devoid of ambition. Have you ever been to a classroom where students looked bored to their spine and where the mood was colder than ice? How can we motivate such a class?...

Australia: We know innovation is key – but there’s little agreement on exactly what it is

We want the best education for our children and we want them to have the innovation skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow. But we don’t agree on what innovation really means. My research has found that employers and students have varying perceptions of innovation,...

US: Where Are All Of The Teachers Going?

Between 2009 and 2014 the enrollment in teacher education programs dropped from 691,00 to 451,000, a 35% reduction. That’s a pretty shocking number. Fewer young people are interested in becoming teachers, and that’s a problem because school enrollment is projected to...

These 5 Teachers Showcase the Future of Blended Learning’s ‘Station Rotation’ Model

Milton Bryant is the first to admit that implementing blended learning successfully didn’t come overnight. For the past four years, Bryant has been tirelessly adapting his approach to personalized learning to ensure that each student is thriving, even when that means...

Why It’s Imperative Educators Resist The Lure Of The Single Story

The education world is full of assumptions, many of which aren’t helpful to improving the quality of teaching and learning that happens in schools. The narratives from outside the industry can be harmful, but perhaps less obvious are the single stories of students and...

6 PD Reads You Shouldn’t Miss

In May we used our Facebook and Instagram feeds to ask, “What books would you recommend to your teacher friends this summer?” We expected to round up five to 10 professional development texts pretty quickly, but we weren’t entirely surprised when, with the end of the...

Do countries pay their teachers enough?

Teachers enter the profession for a variety of reasons. Intrinsic motivations that have to do with the nature of the job and the intangible rewards associated with being an effective teacher play an important role. Yet when comparing a teaching career with similarly...

Why we should increase peace-building capacities of Teachers and Youth

The propaganda and money used to lure young people into violent extremist groups such as Al-Shabaab in East Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria and M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo, must be challenged with one of the humankind’s most powerful tools:...

A Reading List for Differentiated Instruction

One of the many hopes that we as educators have for our students is that they become lifelong learners. We want them to explore their passions, which in time might turn into career opportunities. Through conversations, books, and media, we plant ideas that may someday...

Giving Your Teacher Team a Boost

In any school system, even if we’re the superintendent we have people above us giving directions, people we consider colleagues working by our side, and people who look to us for leadership. As John Maxwell notes in his book The 360 Degree Leader, you don’t have to be...

Four questions to ask yourself about classroom innovation

Innovation is crucial to improving practice, but teachers must approach new ideas with a pinch of salt, says one head of English I earned my magpie badge pretty early in my career. Like many new teachers, I was attracted to every shiny teaching idea I happened upon...

Teaching Tolerance Today

When the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) launched its Teaching Tolerance initiative in 1991, the goal was to intervene early to prevent the formation of prejudice — the kind of hate that could fuel the Klan-related crimes the SPLC was fighting. At the time, the...

The Types of Assessment for Learning

Assessment is certainly a hot topic in education. Teachers everywhere are (rightfully) concerned that we’ve become overly preoccupied with assessing student knowledge. Instead, we should be flipping the switch and refocus on what really matters: student learning. But...

US: How poorly rated schools attract better teachers

The idea of holding schools accountable for students’ performance has stood at the center of Democrats’ and Republicans’ school-reform efforts in the United States for more than two decades—and has sparked significant debate. One of the many questions that have been...

Scaffolding Grit

Often when I look at how to help students, I think back on my own journey as a student. When challenged to teach students to trust that the effort of persistence is worth it, I think back on when I myself figured it out. And do you know what I came up with? The only...

Smart Strategies for Student Success

Even students who’ve had years of active involvement in learning activities don’t automatically use strategies that best foster learning. However, working smarter through the use of specific success strategies can have a profound influence on learning outcomes. In...

8 great books on formative assessment

Today as we were working on formative assessment apps to use on Android, we thought of reposting this collection of books to help teachers learn everything related to formative assessment. Links together with short descriptions of these books are under the visual....

9 Good Android Formative Assessment Apps for Teachers

Formative assessment as we have stated in multiple posts in the past is 'an evaluative approach that allows teachers to take quick snapshots of students learning in class. It’s an ongoing process that can happen anytime during a lesson regardless of content area....

Why ‘Unlearning’ Old Habits Is An Essential Step For Innovation

Teachers are increasingly being asked to embrace new ideas and styles of teaching, but schools don’t always give their educators time or the mental space to absorb and apply those concepts. That’s why the idea of “unlearning” was worth exploring for Beaver Country Day...

More Girls in STEM Means Improving STEM Teacher Training

Women around the world, especially in developing countries, remain a minority in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields of study (STEM). Just take science researchers alone. According to UNESCO, in 121 countries, women make up 29 percent of science...

After working with charities in Jordan, Syrian educator notices children who have never been to school. Then, he created his own

In a north Amman neighborhood, 44-year-old Haytham al-Wazir walks the hallways of the a-Tabyan Educational Center alongside his young students. The a-Tabyan school opened last year, and now counts 80 young refugee and orphan children in the kindergarten through grade...

9 Strategies for Motivating Students in Mathematics

Motivating students to be enthusiastically receptive is one of the most important aspects of mathematics instruction and a critical aspect of any curriculum. Effective teachers focus attention on the less interested students as well as the motivated ones. Here are...

The Ultimate Educational App Chart for Elementary Teachers and Students

Since the start of 2017 we created a section here in EdTech and mLearning dedicated to apps and tools curated specifically for elementary teachers and students. Today we spent sometime going through these resources and pulled out for you this collection of apps. These...

How Do You Know When A Teaching Strategy Is Most Effective? John Hattie Has An Idea

Untangling education research can often feel overwhelming, which may be why many research-based practices take a long time to show up in real classrooms. It could also be one reason John Hattie’s work and book, Visible Learning, appeals to so many educators. Rather...